In 1998, the newly elected Labour government, eager to be seen as supportive of
marriage and families, was evidently so alarmed at the high divorce rate that it commissioned a series of reports into the causes of marriage breakdown and the ways in which it could be tackled.

One suggestion among many was to provide couples intending to marry with some form of preparation course – a secular alternative to those which then, as now, were largely the preserve of religious bodies. But however well intentioned that initiative may have been (although I haven't heard much more about it since), offering marriage preparation primarily as a strategy to reduce the risk of divorce is not the best way to enthuse idealistic young people looking forward to a lifetime of love and happiness.

Even if I were to point out to a young couple planning to marry that the divorce statistics are nudging 50% (which I don't), they would reply that their marriage is going to be different, they know that they are right for one another. This is not the naive and unrealistic "it'll never happen to me" bravado of youth. Their hope for the future is well founded and they are right to be optimistic about their marriage. We need to build on their positive vision and emphasise the fundamental goodness and beauty of marriage, not present it as a gamble in which a bit of preparation might lower the odds of its breaking down.

That is why the church's starting point is to affirm the dignity of marriage, to emphasise that it is something given to us by God as a means of human flourishing, one of the ways in which God invites men and women to share in his own love for us and something that will bring blessings, not only to the couple but to those around them as well. That young couple believe their marriage is going to be special and my job, in preparing them for it, is to help them understand just how special it is meant to be.

Of course, the church's elevated view of marriage doesn't ignore the reality that it won't all be plain sailing, that human nature can and does fall short of the ideal. So our marriage preparation includes down-to-earth input on the practicalities of living together and all it entails – sharing decisions, resolving conflicts, saying sorry – all rooted in the values of respect, forgiveness and, above all, love.

The church realises as well that its traditional assumptions about marriage preparation – where much of the necessary spiritual and human wisdom was absorbed from early childhood within a closely knit Catholic community – are rarely fulfilled today, at least not in developed societies. The baseline of faith is much lower – but that doesn't mean that the blessings of Christian marriage are reserved exclusively for an elite, religiously practising minority.

The late Pope John Paul II in his landmark document on the family in 1981 was insistent that priests should be generous in their welcome to all couples who wish to marry in church, and that we should not be surprised if their motives are often social rather than genuinely religious. After all, he said, marriage is written into human nature by God, so the very desire to marry is a response to that divine initiative – even where there is no obvious or active faith. Marriage preparation is to help them discover and appreciate the full splendour of the calling that they are about to follow.

Finally, we have to challenge the myth that living together helps a couple to prepare for marriage. The sociological evidence shows conclusively that the opposite is true – a couple is far more likely to divorce if they cohabited before marriage, and children born to a married couple are twice as likely to live out their childhood with both their natural parents as those born to cohabiting parents. If any government is serious about tackling family breakdown they should have the courage to unashamedly privilege marriage rather than maintain the pretence that marriage and cohabitation are equivalent lifestyles. Marriage is different: it's worth making the effort for, and it's worth preparing for.